Sir, – I find it very hard not to respect a man who, though born into wealth, decided to risk his life in an effort to topple a US-backed regime because of the way it treated the poor, a man who then actually managed to topple that regime and who implemented a socialist programme in its place.
Throughout, the US acted in a way that showed both its disregard for higher ideals and its disinterest in building a better world in anything but its own model.
For that country now to dismiss its previous support for Batista, the number of CIA assassination attempts on Castro, and the economic blockade, as if these were nothing, all the while counting the Saudis among its best friends, would turn one’s stomach.
And I can very much understand how the prospect of “real democracy” would grow less attractive where you saw that it would surely lead to the Americanisation of one’s socialist dream, democracy having long ago been revealed as so obviously vulnerable to the interests of big business, big finance and powerful nations.
It seems clear to me that all western media portrayals of Castro, etc, must be taken with several barrels of salt, and in particular, the hypocrisy of the moral judgment coming from the land of mass incarceration, the land of Guantánamo, the land of drone strikes, and the land of perpetual warfare. The hypocrisy of this myopic moral judgment is such an elephant in the room that one can hardly breathe. How they have the nerve, I honestly don’t know. – Yours, etc,
BARRA Ó FIANÁIL,
Sallynoggin, Co Dublin.
Sir, – As an Irish person who recently visited Cuba, I do not support the “brave words” of President Michael D Higgins on the death of a tyrant. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL McGONIGLE,
Rochestown, Cork.
Sir, – Fidel Castro’s Cuba wasn’t perfect. Neither is the US, especially Donald Trump’s US. Somewhere in between would be almost ideal. – Yours, etc,
NOEL BYRNE,
Birr, Co Offaly.